RE: [mpowr] Re: [Solutions] Further work on WG (chair) roles - MPOWRWG proposal

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

There is a lot in John's original message, including a great deal of emotion.  Without
wishing to indicate a lack of interest or concern with the other points or
over that emotion, I've made comments on a few points below.


>
>They do not.  They allow everyone who is interested in those discussions and can put up with the near-infinite N/S ratio to participate.  And that is a small subset of the number of people who are materially concerned with the outcome.
>
>Please also note that, as soon as you say that we have no effective mechanism to get IETF community consensus on _anything_ (and you haven't said that, but you are getting close), then we either need to accept the notion that some group has oracular powers to determine consensus or you are proposing that we are out of business.   And, while there are members of the community who believe the IESG acquires oracular powers on installation, I don't... and I know you don't either.

On your first point, having focused groups allows the chairs to ask for (and sometimes
get) the conversations to stick to the points in the charter.  That can help the n/s ratio.
Having a system in which you have a staged series of lists (IETF for very broad discussion on
the nature of the IETF, solutions for discussions on what needs to be done, focused groups
for specific areas of work) does make for complex procmail rules, but it can help.  It
may not allow for everyone materially concerned with the outcome to participate, but
it does show people where to concentrate their efforts to match their interests. 

On your second point, I note the wisdom of not trying to get community consensus on
some things.  We don't pick folks for the IAB, as an example, by community consensus.
The IETF decided a long time ago to constitute a specific group for that task (the NomCom);
the rules under which the NomCom works are in the -bis stages of revision, but that
does not mean we changed to consensus for those decisions.  Community consensus
might pick different people, but the costs of that seem to be outweighed by the
benefits of the other process.

I personally believe that the work Solutions is discussing falls into two different
camps:  work for which small groups can go off and "just do it" and work for which
community involvement and buy-in is so critical that any change, even if functionally
perfect, would fail if done outside of the normal process because the community
wouldn't agree to work under a system it hadn't a hand in designing.

Scott's recent BoF on the new standards track is an example of the second; it is
clear to me that community consensus on this type of change is critical for the
change to succeed.  The EDU team seems to me an example of the former, as
the development of new training materials kind of falls into a "just do it" category.

We may disagree about where ICAR, PROTO, and MPOWR fall in those two categories,
but I think we agree that the two categories exist.  Getting more work on
the "just do it" category done now may be the biggest short term win.  It's
been hard to do for many reasons, including both the emotional attachment
people have to certain ways of doing things and the tendency of some us
(including me) to want to think about the whole system, including the
eventual mechanisms needed for ongoing change. 

>  I am suggesting that some serous triage of those ideas by the IESG, with the IESG really being willing to take responsibility for what they/you like and don't like, would be in order.

The IESG has publicly said that they/we would accept whatever change the community
decided on.  We have lost two members since that statement and gotten one new
one, but I think the decision stands.  We have and are trying to facilitate work on
ideas we think the community has agreed to discuss.  That's "triage" of a very different
sort, though.

>
>	* the IESG has to lead the community, change the
>	documents, and take the heat, or

Speaking personally, I think what you are seeing is us, trying both to
listen to the community on the work that needs to be done and lead
a sometimes highly contentious community effort to create better sets
of systems for doing it.  However badly we're doing it, that *is* what I believe
our effort to be.   This is also us, taking the heat.

				kind regards,
					Ted Hardie
					

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